Medical Help
by Checkerboards
Summary: Dr. Crane, meet Dr. Horrible. Dr. Horrible, meet Dr. McNinja. Dr. McNinja, meet Batman. Readers, meet impending crossover insanity.
1. Lab Rats

_This is, without a doubt, the craziest crossover I've ever written - and speaking as someone who's jammed both GLaDOS and Mr. Bonestripper into their stories, that's saying a lot. Like all my crossovers, I've tried to write this so people unfamiliar with either of our two special guest doctors will be able to follow along - but, like all my crossovers, it's a hell of a lot funnier if you're familiar with the characters that I've dragged kicking and screaming into my universe. _

_Dr. Horrible (from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) is, without a doubt, the star of the best comedy musical about an evil genius ever. You can catch his exploits at drhorrible dot com._

_If you're into goofy Batmanesque stories (and you must be, or you wouldn't be reading this), you need to be reading Dr. McNinja. You have no choice in this matter. Go to drmcninja dot com or suffer my fangirl wrath. (The current story's a great place to start reading! Also, don't miss the alt-text.)_

_Usually, I'd give you a spoiler alert right here. This time, though, there's no excuse for not being at least passingly familiar with the source material. It's right there on the interweb! I'm prepared to sit here patiently until you go read it. _

_I mean it. I have City of Villains all booted up, ready to go, and a shiny new Arachnos Widow to level up. I can wait all day. _

_You're back? Good. On with the story!_

* * *

Jonathan Crane was not a thief.

Rather, he wasn't a _professional_ thief. Oh, certainly thieving played a large part in his life - how else was one to fund a criminal enterprise based on the manufacture and distribution of highly expensive toxins? - but he wasn't the sort to take pride in his thievery, as if it was the only worthwhile thing he'd ever done. Stealing things was merely one of those tasks that had to be done in order to bankroll his _real_ work.

Aside from money, there were other obstacles standing in the way of his research. The most pressing obstacle was and would always be the Batman, that over-muscled vigilante who knew the power of fear but refused to share that knowledge in any scientifically meaningful way. It seemed that he'd spent half his professional life running from Batman, cursing the fates that had doomed him to whip-thin frailty instead of a frame like a grizzly bear. He had to waste countless hours plotting ways to slip beneath Batman's radar, because in a one-on-one fight Batman was certain to win.

Or was he?

Not if Dr. Crane had anything to say about it - and, in a few more minutes, he'd have some very definite and gleeful words on the subject. At the moment, he was lurking in the shadowy woods surrounding a small, cheerful-looking doctor's office. Twigs bit into his kneecaps through his shabby, much-mended pants as he squinted at the tiny glowing dial of a watch on his bony wrist.

_Three...two...one..._On cue, a fireball thumped up into the black night sky. And, as he'd hoped, the door on the other side of the building almost immediately slammed open, followed by the hurried thudding of feet as the doctor and his assistants scrambled into their car. The smallish black sedan, almost invisible behind its blinding headlights, screeched down the short forested road and disappeared.

Perfect. Crane rose to his feet and padded toward the building. It was almost painfully easy to break in - the windows had normal locks, and he'd come prepared with a little circular glass cutter in order to snake an arm inside and unlock them - and it was easy to slide himself in through the narrow gap of the open window.

He trotted quietly down the hallway toward the lab. The handle of the door turned easily under his hand. They hadn't even bothered to lock it! With a tiny smirk of triumph lurking under his mask, the Scarecrow advanced into the lab to look for his prize.

This doctor, Dr. McNinja, an odd name if he'd ever heard one before (and he had - for some reason, people in Gotham named their children tongue-twistingly different names that transformed easily into criminal _noms de guerre_), had invented a new kind of drug. Normally, this would have meant nothing special to Crane, since he didn't pay too much attention to the medical profession any more. In fact, just a few days ago, he'd actively been trying to avoid the news being blasted out of the car idling in front of his lair. _Who on earth listened to NPR at that volume_? he'd wondered, too exhausted from his night in the lab to bother going outside and killing the driver.

The all-too-perky voice had blared like an bullhorn through the pillow wrapped around his ears. "...our own Dr. McNinja has stopped Rayner's drug distribution, and he's also managed to concoct an injectable "anti-ninja-iotic" or "cure" or whatever you want to call it, and is using it to "de-power" all the ninjas." Crane had immediately perked up, letting the pillow fall haphazardly to the bed. This had _possibilities_. "But here's the rub," the radio chirped, "McNinja _refuses_ to let anyone handle the antidote. He won't give it to the cops, the military, hospitals, _nobody_. He says he's essentially created his own kryptonite, and is guarding it with extreme caution. So Dr. McNinja is injecting every single "fake ninja" _personally_, by appointment, in his office."

Would a drug to de-ninja someone who had only become a ninja because of a ninja drug work on someone who had become a caped and chiropterean ninja thanks to years of training? Crane didn't know, but he'd been very eager to find out.

And so Jonathan Crane, who wasn't a thief, crept into the small lab in order to make off with the anti-ninja formula that just might make his life a thousand times easier. It looked like it would be a fairly easy search, provided that the doctor kept his labels up to date. The lab tables were neatly laid out with a wide assortment of medical paraphernalia. In the corner, by the well-locked window, was a large cabinet. Crane quietly swung the doors open, a penlight gripped between his teeth, to reveal shelves with stacks of vials, bottles and packets containing everything from - he squinted - Hair Removal Gel #105 to boring old penicillin. Where was the anti-ninja drug? Long, thin fingers rattled through the shelves. There, in the far corner - what was that jar? He shoved the door open.

_Whong_. "Hey!" someone protested as the door rebounded off of them.

Crane scrambled backward from the cabinet, feeling for the little toxin-release button tucked inside his glove. The penlight spun to the floor, forgotten, as he shoved the breath mask back down over his face. They couldn't be back already! He slammed the door, expecting to see an angry doctor or a surprised security guard behind it.

Instead, stuck halfway through the newly-opened window like a marauding air conditioner, was a young man in a red lab coat with a pair of welding goggles shoved onto his forehead. He scrambled through, deftly unshouldering a black bag as he landed. "Hands up!" the intruder demanded, raising his arm and pointing a black-gloved fist in Crane's direction. A shiny silver gun gleamed on top of a pair of bands mounting the device to his forearm.

The Scarecrow obligingly raised his arms. His thumbs rested lightly on the pair of buttons on either forefinger that, should the intruder get within range, would send toxin spewing in wonderful clouds from the tiny tubes in the elbows of his shirt.

The newcomer gestured with the gun. "Where do you keep the cure?"

"Have you tried a record store?" Crane drawled.

"Don't get cute with me, McNinja. The anti-ninja formula!"

Crane sighed and dropped his arms, fingers resting on the buttons to release the toxin at his wrists. "So you're here for it too, hmm?"

"I said hands up!" the boy ordered. "You have no idea what this gun can do!"

"And _you_ have no idea who you're dealing with," Crane said frostily. "I was here first. Go away."

"Who do you think you are?" the kid demanded.

Crane eased forward into the pool of moonlight, letting the dim silver rays catch the rough burlap of his mask. "The Scarecrow," he hissed.

The kid immediately lowered his weapon. "Wow! I used to read about you all the time when I was growing up!" he gushed, with the air of one meeting a childhood idol. "Laughton, right? Ebenezer Laughton?"

Crane drew himself up to his full, imposing height. "_Dr._ Jonathan Crane," he corrected icily.

"Dr. Horrible," the boy introduced, pulling half-a-dozen bits of shiny technology out of his bag. "How long have you been working for the ELE?"

"I don't work for - or _with_ - anyone," Crane growled. "Go home, kid. I have work to do."

"So do I." The so-called Dr. Horrible set up something that looked like a tiny telescope on the floor, aiming it precisely at the door to the little lab. "How about this: I'll get the formula, and you can watch for McNinja to come in."

"How about this," Crane suggested, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He'd prefer not to gas the kid if he could help it, given that terrified people were more concerned with screams than secrecy. He was certain to get caught sooner if he had to gas the brat. "_I'll_ get the formula, and I promise not to hurt you _too_ badly if you leave. Now."

"You wouldn't hurt me," Dr. Horrible said absently, tweaking a leg of his telescope's tripod into place. "I'm a member of the ELE. Bad Horse would stomp you into the ground."

"Why should I care about you or your horse?" Crane inquired. "I don't care what group you think you belong to. If you don't want to belong to the obituaries, you'll get out of my way."

"Maybe you didn't hear me the first time," the boy said, pulling a remote control from his pocket. "I'm _Dr. Horrible_. I have a PhD in horribleness!"

"Catchphrases are for people more concerned with their PR than their work," Crane fired back.

"PR _is_ my work," the kid said, exasperated. "At least, part of it. How are you supposed to make the populace fear you if you don't tell them why they should?"

A slender finger hovered over the toxin release button. "Would you like the answer to that?" Crane asked pleasantly.

_Bang_. The door to the lab swung wide open as the room filled with brilliant white light. "I'm telling you, it was just like Whitestone - " a young boy's voice trailed off. The Scarecrow and Dr. Horrible turned slow, wide-eyed looks at the group filling the doorway. In the lead was a doctor wearing a grey-and-black ninja mask along with his labcoat. Beside him was a young boy, dressed in cowboy boots and denim, with a red bandana around his neck and a fabulous, luxuriant moustache growing from his upper lip. Behind them, a gorilla with a clipboard and a large brown velociraptor narrowed angry eyes at the intruders.

Then things got a little weird.

With the instant camaraderie available to all villains in the face of Justice, Crane and Horrible put off their fight in favor of surviving this one. As Dr. McNinja sprang forward, the Scarecrow loosed a cloud of fear toxin in his path. The doctor pivoted effortlessly and hurled himself to the side, leaving the toxin to harmlessly dissipate. With the bandana over his face, the young boy threw himself toward the fight, a pair of pistols gripped firmly in his hands.

Gloved fingers clacked on the remote control. Dr. Horrible's machinery blinked and fizzed inside his open black bag. The tiny telescope-esque device that he'd propped on the floor came to life with a blasting _fzzzzz_, spitting out a ray of blue light that froze the incoming ninja and his diminutive bandito assistant in place.

The gorilla and the raptor both tried to shove through the small door at the same time and wedged themselves in place. Snarling in fury at the intruders and each other, the two commenced a stationary wrestling match, clawing at the doorframe and screaming raw hatred at the two stunned criminals.

"Run," Crane suggested, dry-mouthed, and vaulted through the window. Dr. Horrible followed an instant later, lugging his bag of tricks and wheezing as they darted down the short road toward the highway.

"Why didn't you gas the ape?" Horrible accused as they vaulted a fallen log.

"Have you ever - " they ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, "_seen_ a gorilla that's been exposed to fear toxin?" He had. Gorillas in mortal terror didn't cower - they _charged_. As for the velociraptor, well...he wasn't inclined to do anything to make it even more likely to rip his guts out. He'd had his guts ripped out before and it was _not_ a pleasant experience.

A _raaaatch_ of triumph rang out behind them as the window shattered, presumably allowing an exit for the doctor's associates. Horrible stuck a hand into his bag and came out with a little metallic box covered in flashing lights. He tossed it behind them, leaving it blinking tantalizingly in the middle of the road.

They ran in panting silence for a few moments. Crane could almost feel sharp dinosaur talons digging into his shirt. He darted a wild glance over his shoulder. The raptor was behind them, coming up fast on the little box.

_SPANG_! The forest lit up with actinic, searing brilliance as the heavy, putrescent scent of rotting fish filled the air. "What was that?" Crane demanded as they wheeled around a curve in the road.

"Fish-bulb bomb," Horrible answered, a note of pride in his voice. "It should keep the thing blind and distracted until we're away."

They skidded onto the main road. A pair of headlights in the distance was headed their way. Under the mask, Crane's face went pale as he recognized the distinctive _rrrrrrr_ of the engine. "Down!" he barked, bodyslamming Dr. Horrible in his haste to dive into the ditch. Horrible yelped and tumbled down next to him, landing with a _squelch_ in the same puddle of greasy mud that was soaking through Crane's pants.

"What are you -"

"Ssshhhhh!"

They could hear the raptor behind them snorting and screeching as it tried to see or smell its fleeing prey. Leaves blew up wildly around them as the Batmobile whizzed by, screaming around the corner. _Thud_. "Raaaaatch!"

"I think he got the raptor," Crane hissed. He glopped out of the ditch.

"Who?" Horrible asked, poking at his remote control.

"Batman!"

Horrible's eyes widened with recognition. "Him? _Here_?" He freed himself from the mud with a _squortch_ and hammered on the remote control. Nothing happened. "It's dead. Come on - I know a place we can hide!"

Crane's original plan had been to walk to a motel, remove his Scarecrow gear, and book a room under a fake name like any self-respecting villain visiting a new town would do. Now, covered in mud, with Batman on his tail, that plan was looking less and less feasible. "Fine."

Voices sounded in the woods. With a shared look of panic, the pair raced away, leaving a trail of black mud splattered on the asphalt.

* * *

Dr. McNinja was used to getting what he wanted. It was hardly surprising, given his choice of career. Doctors, as a breed, tend to give the impression that they are all-powerful - and ninjas, by necessity, _are_ just about as all-powerful as any mortal human can be. When he wanted something, he made it happen.

They say to be careful what you wish for, but very few wishes are dangerous when they're wished by a ninja doctor with a flair for properly executed pre-mortem one-liners.

The evening had been fairly quiet, for once, until that explosion blew the roof off of City Hall. Doc and his associates had rushed out, confident that they would be needed. When it turned out to be nothing more than a boring old group of pipe bombs, with no hint of involvement by ghosts, wizards, ghost wizards, vampires, midget doctors or Ronald McDonald, they holstered their various weapons and trudged back to the office. Gordito had insisted that it was _kinda_ like the last ghost wizard, who'd had a very mean fireball spell, and he'd continued insisting that right up to the moment that they'd walked into the lab to find two strangers arguing in front of the drug cabinet.

Doc had immediately swung into action, dodging a spray of toxin by pure instinct and wheeling to confront the two intruders. Then -

The room blinked around him. The window was shattered, with a vaguely dinosaur-shaped chunk missing out of the panes of glass. His secretary, Judy, was standing in front of him, holding a severely broken weapon in her huge black hands. Doc effortlessly slid to a halt. Gordito, who was decidedly less nimble on his feet, slammed heavily into his back.

"Judy! Where'd they go?" he demanded. Judy dropped the destroyed ray gun on the floor and waved her hands. "What? What are you trying to tell me?"

"She says that the raptor went after them."

Dr. McNinja whipped around to spot the owner of that oddly familiar voice. There, in the corner of his lab, examining the door handle, was...

"Gordito," Doc hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "Am I bleeding anywhere?"

"What?"

"Am I _bleeding_ anywhere?" he repeated urgently.

"No...why?" Gordito whispered back.

"Because I see Batman in the corner."

"Batman _is_ in the corner."

Dr. McNinja examined the black-cowled crimefighter. He'd been known to hallucinate when he was on the brink of death - in fact, now that he thought about it, he'd been hallucinating a lot recently - and he was fairly certain that what he saw could not be real. "Seriously, Gordito."

"He's _right there_!"

Glass crunched behind them as someone entered through the window. Doc swiveled and backed up to keep both the window and the Caped Crusader in sight, his ninja instincts automatically kicking in to prevent him from exposing his back while his mind was too busy turning cartwheels of ecstasy and blithering about how Batman was _right there, oh my god, it's Batman. Batman's in my lab..._

"He's headed away from town," Robin announced, picking his way around most of the larger glass chunks on the floor. "Are there any more velociraptors around here?"

"No, just Yoshi," Gordito said proudly.

"Oh. He's yours?"

"Yeah!"

"I think you'd better come with me," Robin said. "When we drove up, he tried to charge the car. We got out of the way and he ended up ramming into a tree."

"Yoshi!" Gordito gasped, dashing for the window. "Yooooshiiiiii," he called into the dark woods as he vaulted the glass-covered windowsill and trotted around the building. Robin flashed an _It's-okay-I'm-a-crimefighter_ smile at Doc before he followed Gordito into the night.

Batman finished his examination of the equipment on the table. "Did they take anything?" he asked Doc.

Had they? Dr. McNinja swung the door of the cabinet open and peered inside. "I don't think so," he said, nudging bottles back into their correct places. "They left the narcotics, and the - _oops_!" His trembling elbow knocked into a box, sending it plummeting to the floor. A labcoated arm lashed out and caught the box as a spray of loose white tubes came tumbling out of the top of it.

Batman picked one up and studied it. "Hair removal gel?"

"There's been a rash of lumberjacking recently," Doc explained, stuffing the rest of the tubes back into the box. "Nothing's missing."

"Why would the Scarecrow come here?" Batman tossed the tube back at the doctor. Doc caught it and tucked it into his pocket. _This one's going on the mantel, _he decided, _with maybe a little sign...Batman Touched This...nah. _

He dismissed thoughts of his upcoming "I-Met-Batman" shadowbox and turned his mind to the failed robbery. "Is he involved with the Bunyan hunters?"

"No."

"Dracula? I know Dracula's not very happy with me right now."

"No."

Doc brightened. "Those kids from the bar!" he declared.

"No..." Batman growled, starting to lose what little patience he had.

"That's got to be it, though!" He pulled a drawer in one of his lab tables open, revealing a gleaming assortment of little metal things capable of seriously injuring people, and began loading up his pockets. "The Scarecrow must have heard about my anti-ninja-iotic! I cured a bunch of people in the bar last weekend," he said with pride as he strapped a second katana across his shoulders. "It was all over the radio." When he looked up, Batman was gone.

* * *

Batman strode up to the Batmobile, interrupting Robin and Gordito's conversation over the bruised velociraptor. "Let's go," he barked at his young associate.

"Later, Gordito!" Robin said as he obediently leapt to his feet.

The roof of the Batmobile slid back. "So anyway," Dr. McNinja said, lounging in the passenger seat with his feet on the dashboard, "you're going to want help to catch those two, right?"

"How did you get in there?" Batman demanded.

"Ninja tricks. _You_ know," Doc said, winking merrily.

"I don't need your help. I can _handle_ the Scarecrow and his henchmen," Batman said icily.

"I know. But it's not just him," Dr. McNinja pointed out. "The other guy wasn't with him. The themes didn't match."

"Who was it?"

Doc shrugged. "I've never seen him before. Red coat, welding goggles, twitchy face?"

Batman mentally scrolled through his list of potential offenders. "Horrible," he said decisively.

"What?"

"Where would they go?" Batman demanded.

"Judy said they went that way, right?" Doc asked, hitching a thumb over his shoulder to point at the pitch-black woods.

"Yeah," Robin chirped. "They did."

"Then I know just who to ask." Dr. McNinja vaulted out of the car. "Things are a lot easier when you've got robots watching the city."

Batman was inclined to disagree. Still, spy robots had their uses, and if it meant they could track the Scarecrow and Dr. Horrible without walking into a trap, he would go along with it for now. With his cape trailing behind him, Batman followed the doctor.

The two sidekicks looked at each other. "Do you like beets?" Gordito asked.

"Sure," Robin said, a little baffled at the question.

"You can have mine. C'mon." Gordito checked his pistols and sauntered off after his boss. Cracking twigs behind him indicated that his raptor was limping to catch up to him. "Go home, Yoshi!" he ordered.

Yoshi, with a slightly swollen ankle and a nasty bruise on his head, let out a _raaatch_ of disappointment and disappeared back toward the little office.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: Yay! Beets!_

_Direct quotes were taken from both Dr. Horrible and Dr. McNinja, specifically the radio bit from 'Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja' and Horrible's lovely catchphrase. Ebenezer Laughton is, of course, Marvel's Scarecrow, because apparently mashing three universes together just wasn't enough for me. _

_Crane's adventure in disembowelment was from Detective Comics #836. Sixty points to you if you spot the Simpsons reference!_


	2. Beet It

A lot has been written about the woods. In fact, there are probably enough books about forests and the beauties therein to make up the remains of one quite large shredded and pulped area of timberland.

Very little has been written about _this_ forest. It's dark, with deep shadows concealing piles of dead leaves and bits of dry bracken that are likely to snap under even the softest footstep. And, unlike most other forests at night, this forest is absolutely silent. Not a single owl is hooting. There is not a creature for miles around that will dare to place a paw in this all-too-silent patch of woodland outside the caves.

Four silhouettes stood in the gloom and quietly observed the cave's entrance. One of them - the one in the blindingly white lab coat - stepped forward. "Stay here," he warned, black dress shoes crunching on the bits of natural debris strewn outside the cave's entrance.

Dr. McNinja sidled into the darkness, watching with narrowed eyes for the first hint of movement. Would it be from behind the stalactite? From above? Maybe from the small, ribbony path of worn rock where a waterfall had carved a perfect hiding place?

He crept up onto a stalagmite to get a better view. It wouldn't be a ranged attack - that wouldn't be any fun. No, it was definitely going to be hands-on. His shoe scraped against the stone, barely audible in the dripping, chilly darkness.

The rock beneath his feet exploded upward. Two powerful, stripy legs scissored toward him, aiming to catch him by the knees, but he had already hurled himself upward to cling spider-like to a stalactite. The stripy black blur sprang toward him, brandishing a gleaming silvery sai in either hand. The good doctor readied a handful of shuriken and -

_ThwipthwipthwipthwipBONK. _Something whizzed out of the darkness and wrapped around them like a love-starved octopus, belting them together tightly at the waist. Dr. McNinja and his mysterious opponent fell to the ground, only lightly kicking one another as they fought to land on their feet. The fake stalagmite rattled away into the depths of the cave with one swat from a tabi-clad foot.

"Who was that?" the other ninja demanded, slicing through the rope with a quick slash of a tiny dagger.

Doc brushed the silken bat-line off of his hips, tucking a piece in his pocket as a souvenir. "I'd like you to meet Batman and Robin," he said proudly. "And this is...my mother."

Batman and Mitzi scowled suspiciously at one another from under their masks.

"Hi, Mrs. McNinja," Gordito greeted, waving with his left hand. A blur of silver, like a freshly smelted sparrow, sang through the air at him. _Bang_! The tiny sharp thing spun harmlessly away as Gordito holstered his right-hand pistol.

"You'll do," Mitzi nodded, turning on her heel and stalking into the tiny incongruous house set into the cave wall.

"The robot room's downstairs," Doc said, dropping his shuriken back into his pocket with a faint jingling noise. "This way." The quartet entered the little house, shutting the neatly painted front door behind them. The interior was typical suburbia: knickknacks and pictures clustered on the shelves, soft curtains draped beside the windows, and well-polished floors underfoot. In fact, if the family photos on the wall hadn't been of four masked ninjas, one almost might have mistaken it for a normal home.

A door at the end of the hallway swung open. "Oh. It's you," another ninja greeted. His mustache, viewable through a specially-cut hole in his mask, was splashed with oil and grit.

"Yeah. Are the robots up and running?" Doc asked.

Dan McNinja shrugged. "I don't know. _Are_ the robots up and running?" he asked his younger son pointedly.

The boy shrugged, tugging sheepishly on his hat. "No, sir."

"None of them?" Gordito asked, shocked.

"Huh? Oh, the ones outside are cool," the boy dismissed. His metal necklace, upon closer inspection, bore a spray of scorch-marked debris. "The snakes just exploded again."

"Good," Doc said. "We'll go down and look at the video feeds, if that's okay with you."

Dan shrugged. "Does your...friend like robots?" he asked guardedly.

"He's _Batman_," Doc explained, as if that was all the answer that anyone needed. "This is my dad, Dan, and my brother..." he sighed. "Dark Smoke Puncher."

"Yo, Gordito!" the boy ninja said, perking up, "you gotta come see what we did to the bear. It's tight!"

"Yeah?" Gordito said, interested. They moved toward the basement door.

Mitzi stuck her head out of the kitchen into the hallway. "Dinner's ready," she informed them.

"Okay," Doc said, "we're just going to go down to the basement and - "

A black-gloved hand snapped out of the doorway and caught him by the collar. "_Dinner's. Ready_," she repeated.

"Okay then!" Doc wheezed. "Dinnertime. Right." Mitzi dropped him and disappeared back into the kitchen. "Go ahead and grab a seat - I'm just going to go help," he said, waving Batman and the boys down the hall toward the dining room. "We'll be there in a second!"

When they were out of earshot, he spun and darted into the kitchen. "Did you poison anything?" he demanded.

Mitzi, balancing a full row of serving platters on her arm, narrowed icy eyes at him. "What kind of a question is that?" she snapped.

"You _always_ poison dinner when we have guests!" Doc sighed. "I'm asking you - _please_ - please don't poison Batman!"

Mitzi scooped another dish up and wriggled it into place on her elbow. "This is my house, young man," she reprimanded, "and I'll poison who I like!"

Dan popped his head in through the swinging kitchen door. "If this _Batman_ was half as good as you always said he is, he wouldn't _need_ you to be in here asking your mother not to poison them. He'd deal with it himself like a _proper_ ninja would."

"Okay! Fine!" Doc waved his hands in the air, exasperation coming off of him like steam. "Poison the dinner! Whatever!" Mitzi, with her remaining free hand, slid a brimming bowl full of beets onto her left wrist. "It's the beets, isn't it?" Doc demanded, standing in the doorway with his hands pressed against the frame as if it might collapse and bury him under a mound of drywall and well-polished wood. "You poisoned the beets!"

Mitzi glared at him. "Move," she commanded. With the well-trained reflexes of a long and violent childhood, Doc snapped to attention somewhere near the stove as Mitzi stalked out of the room.

"No, wait," he called, hurrying after her. "You can't...start without Dad," he finished lamely as he skidded into the dining room to find the table surrounded by questioning vigilantes. _Drat_. He slid into his chair and moodily _ting_ed a fork into his water glass with the flick of a finger.

Mitzi performed a complicated shrug. Dishes spun from her arms and rattled into place on the table. Dan McNinja, mustache freshly groomed, took his place at the head of the table and lifted the first platter.

Batman looked at the spread of food silently, his blank white eyes focusing one by one on each bowl and platter. Could he have heard the conversation in the kitchen? Doc devoutly hoped so. One by one, the dishes passed by Doc. Roast beef...salad...potatoes...beets.

With the bowl full of bright purple beets in one hand, and the serving spoon in the other, he looked daringly at Mitzi. She pinned him with a cold, flat stare that told him nothing. There was really only one way to handle this.

Doc scooped a generous portion of beets onto his plate, followed by a second generous portion, topped by a third portion that always gave its entire salary to charity. "Looks good, Mom," he lied, scraping the last one onto his plate before settling the empty bowl back onto the table. "Whoops! There's none - "

China rattled.

"...left," he said, looking at the mountain of neatly sliced beets in the newly refilled bowl. Fabric wrinkled slightly on Mitzi's mask as she smirked at him. With a quiet sigh, he lifted the new bowl of possibly deadly beets and passed it down the table.

One of the best things about the ninja mask is that it hides one's face. (Well, _obviously_, or why would ninjas wear them?) It was easy to act casually when the thousand tiny tells on your face were covered with opaque fabric. She wanted to ruin the dinner? Two could play at that game. Silently, below the tablecloth, Dr. McNinja slid a syringe from a hidden pocket in his labcoat and carefully slipped the needle through his trousers and into his leg. At least the antidote would keep _him_ alive for long enough to get more for the others...

There had probably been more strained family dinners in the history of the world. One can imagine the sheer joy and relaxation involved with a dinner at Henry VIII's place, and dinnertime with the Borgias had possibly been less than pleasant as well. On the whole, however, this dinner ranked up there at the top of the list of Dinners I'd Rather Not Eat for Dr. McNinja.

The adults concentrated silently on their food. The boys, however, eagerly launched into a discussion about robots. Since the three of them each had some experience with saving the world and/or fighting said robots to the death, the conversation tended more toward battle techniques and emergency hacks than speculations about whether Optimus Prime would wipe the floor with Voltron.

Doc gingerly lifted a forkful of beets, with the vain hope flitting across his mind that perhaps the antidote might kill some of the taste as well as the poison. A single, deep magenta-stained drop of liquid splashed onto his plate as he stared down the forkful of death. Then, with a quick, indrawn breath, the beets hit his tongue.

Oh, yes, they were every bit as vile as he remembered. But...something wasn't right. There was the firm, yet mushy beet, and there was the tangy, mouth-puckering brine...where was the poison? His mother's poison always left a distinct, smoky aftertaste on the back of his tongue.

She _hadn't_ poisoned the dinner! It had all been one of her mind games. With a smile of relief, he scooped up a forkful of salad. Dressing gleamed on the fresh, crisp greens. He crunched happily into them.

Oh. _There_ was the poison. He ran his gaze over the table. The only ones to take the salad had been himself and his father. Dan would be all right - his mother had yet to come up with a poison that would slow him down for even a moment - and the antidote would surely take care of whatever she'd laced the salad dressing with in his case.

His smile of relief faded as he looked down at his plate. The beets, resting in a pile the size of a large kitten, puddled disgustingly together at the edge of his plate.

_A ninja has no fear_. _A ninja has no fear._ With only a brief pause to wish that ninjas had no tastebuds, Doc raised his next forkful of beets to his mouth.

* * *

Jonathan Crane was not fond of the outdoors. There was a _reason_ that he worked in Gotham, and it only had a little to do with the wide availability of test subjects and the strong possibility of being sent to Arkham instead of death row. He'd spent his childhood outside: tending the fields on his great-grandmother's farm, hiding in the bushes from bullies, plodding step by step down the long, dusty roads from school to home, coming up with stories to explain away the bruises that his great-grandmother never asked about...

The Scarecrow was a man of cities, and he preferred to stay that way. Unfortunately, he'd wound up stuck with Dr. I'm-Horrible-At-Directions, and so he'd spent the last half an hour trudging through the damp and squidgy forest in an aimless search pattern to find a recognizable landmark.

"You're telling me that with all that electronic junk, you didn't think to bring a _map_?" Crane said as they rounded a bulbous boulder for the third time.

Dr. Horrible, squinting into the distance, ignored him. "That way," he said, pointing down the only fork in the path that they hadn't yet tried. "We're almost there - I think."

"You're sure?" Crane said snidely. "Or is this another one of those _we're almost there_s like the last twelve?"

Gadgets clanked as Horrible shifted the bag irritably to his other shoulder. "You're more than welcome to go back to the office," he snapped. "I'm sure McNinja and his pet would love to see you, unless you've got some kind of brilliant plan like your _last_ one."

"I was _going_ to be gone before they got back!" Crane grumbled, wincing as his sodden foot squelched noisily into another mud puddle. "It wouldn't have mattered if you'd just stayed out of it."

"Me?" Horrible laughed. "Without me, you'd be back there being used as a toothpick. _There_ it is," he beamed, picking up the pace and hurrying toward a huge white blur. Crane resolutely forced his fingers away from the toxin release buttons. He needed this twerp to stay safe tonight. After he had the cure, though...oooh, he'd have some fun then. With the back of his glove, he blotted fog from his glasses under the mask and peered disbelievingly at Horrible's residence.

It was a semi truck. A huge, single-trailered semi truck, with WALMART printed in giant blue letters on either side of the trailer. Another young man, his pale t-shirt soaked with sweat, squinted at a comic book in the dim glow of the truck's hazard lights. He looked up, straightening in his lawn chair as the duo of villains approached.

"You came all the way here in a Wal-Mart truck?" Crane shook his head.

"What's more evil than Wal-Mart?" Horrible shrugged. "Hey, Moist!" he called to the new guy.

"Hey, Doc!" The damp young man waved an equally damp comic at the two of them in greeting. "Who's your friend?"

"He's the Scarecrow."

"Laughton? Here?" Moist brightened with awe.

"Nah. Rain something," Horrible said dismissively.

"Jonathan Crane," the Scarecrow snapped, thoroughly irritated. He calmed himself down momentarily by picturing his soon-to-be-full test room, after he'd shorn the upstart of all of his irritating little devices.

"Oh!" Moist grinned. "Crane...from Gotham, right? I heard about that one thing you did recently...where everyone was scared of you?"

"That tends to happen," the Scarecrow said dryly.

"No, the whole city, all at once. Pretty cool," Moist complimented. Crane let a little smirk of pride flit across his face, safe under the mask. "So, Doc, did you get the cure?"

"Nah. McNinja came back early." Horrible ran his hands up the back of the truck, feeling for the catch that would spring the door open. "We need a better plan." With a tiny squeak, the doors swung open to reveal a portable lair crammed with bits and pieces of technological advancements. "We'd better get moving," he added, hoisting himself into the back of the trailer. "Wouldn't want the heroes to find us."

Crane swung himself easily up into the trailer and pulled the doors shut behind him. From outside, he could hear Moist climbing into the cab and starting up the truck.

There was a soft-looking green sofa wrapped heavily in plastic to his left. He settled down on it, grimacing at the feel of wet, muddy burlap against his skin. An equally well-wrapped ottoman waited to support his ankles. Next to the couch was a bed, neatly made. The rest of the trailer was packed with electronics - prototype robots, computers, and various ray weapons jostled for space on the floor, while wires supporting delicate webs of metal dangled from the ceiling. If he'd been inclined to give credit where credit was due, he'd have been somewhat impressed by the lair.

But, in his time as a villain, he'd seen enough to dismiss this lair as comparatively nothing. It had a couch that he could sleep on, and that was about the only redeeming quality in this whole mess. Team-ups _never_ worked out. He'd belonged to a handful of evil organizations - the Injustice League, the Injustice Gang, the Secret Society of Supervillains - and every time, the heroes had snuffed out their efforts by using their weaknesses against each other. Even when it had been just him and another villain, he'd always wound up as the punching bag. Teaming together _didn't work_.

But teaming together until he could throw the other party away as hero bait - oh, yes, that worked _beautifully_. Crane slid one of the toxin sprayers out of his shirt and examined it, carefully cleaning mud from the various intricate bits that made up the trigger. _Let's see how effective his gadgets are against _this, he thought smugly as he scraped mud from his pride and joy.

* * *

Dr. Horrible, nestled behind a wall of monitors and other electronics, peeked through a gap at the Scarecrow on his couch. Frankly, he was rather pleased that the man had happened along. It was always useful to have another target for the heroes to focus on.

Speaking of which...the Batman was out there somewhere. _That_ was a complication he hadn't anticipated. Taking out Captain Hammer had been one thing (oh, and what a glorious thing it had been - reducing that monstrous, testosterone-fuelled egomaniac to a pile of psychological rubble was page one in his mental scrapbook of Awesome Things I've Accomplished) but Batman would be quite another thing altogether. Captain Hammer had tended to rely on his super-strength alone to get the job done - not that he'd needed much else most of the time, unfortunately - but Batman used his strength _and_ his mind, not to mention the array of bat-gadgetry in his belt.

He booted up his laptop. Leaving behind the question of _could_ he take out Batman - and that was a pretty big question - he turned to his next thought. _Should _he take out Batman? The rogues of Gotham were notoriously proprietary about their hero. Well, at least he'd heard that the Joker was, and the Joker was not a man to trifle with. Should he really drag the Evil League of Evil into something that might turn into a prolonged, vicious war merely to get Batman off of his back?

It was at times like this that he was glad that he hadn't quite finished taking over the world. His top-secret ELE wireless connection blinked into life a mere moment before he opened his email account. Within a few minutes, he'd typed up a rather succinct version of what had recently happened and fired it off to management to ask them what to do next.

His inbox was choked with new mail. A slight smile drifted across his face as he flicked through them. Comments on his latest blog - mostly concerning questions as to what the big secret thing he was going to steal was - mingled with spam and the occasional useful letter. Arachnos wanted him to join them to aid Dr. Aeon in the lab - deleted. Aeon was a jerk. Mad Scientists United wanted him to lend a hand to rebuild the Sinister Sixty - nah. If he was going to waste time building an army of robots, he was going to use his own designs, not Hufflebaggins'. Trans Poly U wanted money for a new lab, since the old one had been destroyed thanks to yet another careless student in the mad sciences - nope. Just because he'd gone to school there didn't mean he felt any kind of long-term loyalty to them.

_Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding_! His email alert chimed through the air. A response already? He clicked on the new email.

"BAD HORSE, BAD HORSE, -" the speakers thundered.

"Can you _turn it down_?" Crane snapped, glaring at Horrible through his wall of technology.

"Sure." Horrible spun the knob. The speakers continued singing, much quieter this time.

"..._the ninjas in Maryland are standing in our way__  
With Batman's help, they could put us in disarray  
__And since you have the power to make them go astray -  
You must be quick, without remorse  
to kill the Batman! Signed, Bad Horse!_"

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: ...cuz I'm fillin' up my belly with ice cream and jelly, and I'm toppin' it with pickled beets, oh yeah! Toppin' it with pickled beets!...dear god, I'm rapping a song from the Care Bears/Wonderland crossover. Eighties cartoons will be the death of me one day - that is, if the ninjas don't kill me first for posting this on Talk like a Pirate Day. (Also, beets are delicious. So there.)_

_References ahoy! Arachnos is from the game City of Villains, which I waste far too much time playing. Mad Scientists United is from Tom Smith's musical The Last Hero On Earth_._ Trans Poly U (Transylvania Polygnostic University) is from Girl Genius (girlgeniusonline dot com), which I haven't read all the way through yet, but I adore Tom Smith's Trans Poly U fight song. (If you're not listening to Tom Smith yet, you're a silly person who is missing out. He's at tom smith online dot com.) Crane's master plan that impressed Moist is from The Batman Adventures #19._


	3. Grin and Bear It

Being a criminal is easy. Any jerk with a little spare time and a bit of imagination can shatter the laws of the land like an elephant stomping on gingerbread houses.

Being a supervillain is trickier. Oh, the actual villainy might be easy enough, depending on the chosen methods. Merely stealing something big and expensive is definitely going to be simpler than carefully constructing a twelve-story robot capable of performing advanced calculus and walking down the road without falling over. But then, that was the mark of the _true_ supervillain - the one who was willing to go to any length to see his vision come to life. While it was technically possible to be a supervillain with a mere knife, it wasn't something that would get you the respect of your peers. Holding a man hostage with a knife at his throat - well, anyone could do that. Holding a man hostage in an intricate web of machinery that was equipped to apply several methods of instant death at a certain command? _That_ took skill.

In the end, it was all about standards. Most supervillains followed a certain train of logic. If you were going to take the time to plan a bank robbery, why not take a few extra hours to make it tie in with your own personal theme? If that meant painting your weapons to look like your own face, or stuffing your assistants into full-body mascot costumes, that was all to the better.

Dr. Horrible and Dr. Crane didn't count themselves among the flashy, overdone theme villains of the world. They had standards that they felt put them above the likes of the Mad Hatter or the Pink Pummeler. They had no sidekicks in distracting outfits or calling cards that they left in various places to attract heroic attention.

They did have costumes, though. A lot of derisive words have been spoken about masks and spandex, but very few people will argue the point that a man willing to look like a murderous lunatic is probably crazy enough to _be_ one. (Besides, as any marketing guru will tell you, a recognizable brand - or, in this case, costume - tends to stick in the mind and remind people of just what you're offering them. When what you're offering is death, people tend to take notice.)

Appearances were important, and thus costumes were important. It was vital to look like an on-the-ball, off-the-wall villain capable of mass destruction - and it was nearly impossible to pull that look off with dried ditch mud splattered all over your outfit. That's why, when the sun rose over Cumberland the next morning, the local laundromat had two somewhat scruffily attired men lurking outside with bundles of laundry tucked under their arms.

The attendant, a bored-looking young man with his hair gelled into something that resembled a ball of yarn after an hour alone with five energetic kittens, opened the door and looked dully at his waiting customers. Then, with a shrug, he kicked a doorstop into place and sauntered behind the counter, where a glowing iPod rested beside an open sketchbook. With the fine customer service so often available in such charming locations, the boy nestled a set of headphones gently over his stiff hair and proceeded to ignore the two supervillains as they made their way toward the bank of washing machines.

Crane, dressed in a set of Horrible's spare clothing, scowled as he tipped his laundry into the machine. What kind of a town _was_ this, where a man couldn't leave his stolen car in a parking lot without someone else stealing it? His own clothes, his spare costume, and all of that lovely fear toxin...gone. He'd have to rely on what he had - and what he had was a bundle of muddy clothing and enough fear toxin to happily terrify most of Maryland, provided that they scrunched in tight.

He slammed the lid of the machine and spun the dial until it kicked into life. Then, with a sneer of distaste for his too-small clothing, he settled on a handy countertop and folded his long, lanky legs beneath himself. His pant legs rode up even farther, exposing his skin halfway up his calf. He tugged his sleeves down, stretching the fabric of the dark grey hooded sweatshirt and not caring in the slightest, and looked for his compatriot.

Dr. Horrible was staring into the open washing machine as if it held the answer to life's greatest mysteries. His filthy red lab coat dangled from one hand, forgotten. Crane pointedly cleared his throat. They had to be out of here as soon as possible! Batman tended to keep night hours in Gotham, because he had a whole city full of miscreants to worry about. The odds of putting a stop to random crime were much higher at night, when criminals crept from their hiding spots and tried to use the shadows to their own advantage. On the road, though...well, who knew whether Batman would start looking for him in the daytime? Not to mention the ninja doctor - doctors certainly had to be available during the day, after all.

A second washer rattled into life. With his hands jammed deeply into his pockets, Horrible slouched his way to the countertop and leaned against it, staring through the large, open windows to the sunny street outside.

With no book to read, and no fear toxin equipment to fiddle with, it looked like it was going to be a long, boring wait. Crane vainly looked for some other form of entertainment, found none, and rolled his eyes. It was just like being back at Arkham.

Well, even in Arkham, there had been one way to entertain himself. Small talk had never been his forte, but surely they could find some topic to discuss. "Penny for your thoughts?" he asked agreeably.

Small, fresh-faced Dr. Horrible snapped a glare in his direction that was so poisonous it was a wonder he didn't die on the spot.

Most people might have dropped the inquiry. Then again, most people weren't psychiatrists who were fascinated with fear (and its close cousin, hate). Crane tipped his head lightly to the side, acknowledging the death-glare without any display of submission to it. And then...he waited.

If there was one common thread that bound the world of supervillainy together, beyond the costumes, the plots, and the inevitable smashing of faces by their enemies, it was this: Villains loved to talk. Everyone knew it. When given a chance, the average villain would preen and strut and tell the world of his mighty achievements. Likewise, that same villain would always take the chance to whine and whinge about how the world had done him wrong, with more pathos and tear-jerking soliloquies than a country song written by Shakespeare.

Crane waited, silently, rather like a spider in a web waiting for a tasty morsel to come winging by. Horrible's face twitched once, twice, and again, the skin around his eyes crinkling up in a spray of crow's feet. Any minute now. Any minute..._now_.

Horrible looked outside, focusing on a tiny litter tumbleweed pinwheeling its way down the sidewalk. "Have you ever been in love?"

Crane mumbled something noncommittal. He knew very well that Horrible wasn't actually interested in his love life (or lack thereof). He was looking for empathy, not answers - which was good, because Crane certainly wasn't about to tell him anything regarding his rather disastrous romantic past. Some things - and people - were better left forgotten.

"I have," Horrible announced softly. Crane felt his lips tighten with irritation. Of _course_ the boy had been in love. Why else would he be bringing it up? "She was...she was..." He sighed wistfully. "Her name was Penny. She was..._perfect_."

"A villain?" Crane asked lightly.

"No!" Horrible snapped. "She'd never...she wasn't...she was _good_," he explained, hands jerking wildly in the air.

_Was_. The girl was definitely dead, then. It was probably for the best. Villain/civilian relationships almost never worked out. Just look at Jervis' infatuation with "Alice" - though, admittedly, it was a different girl each time - or that madman on his so-called Skullcrusher Mountain. They always thought they could impress the girls by showing them how marvelous and wonderful their lives could be together. Since very little about the rogues' lives was marvelous or wonderful to begin with, the explanations hardly ever went down well.

"...if I could have just _shown _her," Horrible said, raking a hand through his hair.

Crane, who had tuned out the long-winded description of the ever-perfect Penny, glanced up. "Hmm?"

"My _lair_! My _work_!"

"Your _voice_," Crane hissed. "Keep it down!"

Horrible slouched down onto the counter, letting his feet dangle listlessly over the linoleum. "It would have worked," he mumbled. "It would have..."

_Baaah - baaaah - baaaaaah - baaaah - bah-bah-bah-bah_! The attendant's cell phone, laying on the counter near him, brayed into life with the sound of staticy trumpets. Equally distorted music leaked from the oblivious boy's headphones as he scribbled in his book.

_Baaah - baaaah - baaaaaah - baaaah - bah-bah-bah-bah_! Horrible leaned forward, glaring past Crane at the irritating little device polluting his personal space. "I'm going to _kill_ that kid," he hissed.

"Have fun," Crane said, settling back to watch.

"That's Captain Hammer's theme!" he snapped as the phone went off again. "That kid's not a hero, is he?" They studied him in suddenly tense silence. "...Nah," Horrible dismissed. "I'd recognize the hair." _Baaah - baaaah - baaaaaah - baaaah - bah-bah-bah-bah_! "I _hate_ that song," he grumbled.

"Your boss has a theme song," Crane said slowly. "Your _nemesis_ has a theme song. Does anyone where you come from _not_ have a distinctive tune associated with them?"

"No," Horrible said flatly. _Baaah - baaaah - baaaaaah - baaaah - bah-bah-bah-bah_! "Answer the _phone_," he yelled at the kid. The boy frowned at his drawing and carefully corrected the curve of a line.

With a grunt of frustration, Horrible snatched up a nearby box of dryer sheets and chucked it at him. It spun through the air and _crunched_ into the boy's hair. Flakes of dried gel snowed down onto his sketchbook. "Hey!" he protested, yanking the headphones off.

"Your phone's ringing!" Horrible snapped.

"Oh." The boy snaked a long, skinny arm out and flicked his phone open. "Yeah?" he muttered. His eyes widened. "Yeah?" he said with renewed interest. "What channel?...Yeah, okay, man. I'm going, I'm going," he assured his caller as he clambered up onto his desk. A fingerless-gloved hand expertly prodded the television bolted to the wall into life. "...There," he said with satisfaction, leaping to the ground.

Crane could easily hear Horrible's stifled shriek of fury as the screen filled with the image of a burly, handsome man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a large hammer. "...am I right, Mayor?" he joked to someone offscreen. Laughter rippled through his televised audience. "But seriously, folks. I'm proud to say that once again, Captain Hammer is here to bash away your problems. Questions?"

The media in front of him exploded. "Captain Hammer! Captain Hammer!" a young blonde called, waving her notebook madly.

"You," he said, pointing at her. "The cute one."

She giggled happily. "Captain Hammer, it's just so _good_ to have you back," she gushed. "Where have you been?"

He beamed at her. "I've been on an exclusive hero retreat. Not that I needed to be better - could anyone _get_ any better than this?" he added, flexing an arm. "But some of the newer guys wanted some tips from the Hammer, and I'm so giving that I just couldn't say no."

"Hero retreat?" Crane muttered disbelievingly.

"The Mended Cape Home for Heroes," Horrible growled. "Psychiatric wing."

"Because of you?"

"Yeah."

"Nice."

"You there. Bearded guy," Hammer called.

"What about the allegations that you abandoned the Caring Hands homeless shelter attack without stopping the villain?" the man asked.

Hammer's self-confident smile twitched, ever so slightly. "If you remember, I was the one who punched him halfway across the room," he said.

"And the one crying for his _mama_," Horrible sneered quietly.

"And, like I said before, after I had knocked him out, I got an urgent call on the Hamphone, and I had to leave."

"So you're ready to face Dr. Horrible again?"

"If Dr. Horrible shows his face around here again," Hammer said quietly, "he'll regret it." The leather of his gloves squeaked in protest as his hands curled into fists. "But since he seems to have skipped town, no worries, huh?" he grinned, instantly returning to his charming demeanor.

"Captain Hammer!" A brunette shoved forward through the crowd. "What's this we hear about a new sidekick?"

Hammer grinned. "Well, she's not my sidekick _yet_. After the tragic loss of my beloved, um, Kelly -"

Horrible made a noise that sounded somewhat like a bull coming home from a nice day in the pasture to find a troupe of matadors in his stall. "_Penny_," he corrected.

"Shut up!" the boy called from the front. "I'm trying to watch this!"

"-decided that she wanted to help me out. Naturally, I didn't _need_ help, but she's kinda cute, so I said okay." Hammer grinned his insufferably happy grin at the press.

Horrible jammed a hand deep into his sweatshirt pocket. Buttons on a hidden remote control clicked. There was a tiny _beep, beep_, followed by a crackling explosion as the television screen shattered. "What the hell?" the attendant yelped, stumbling backward and falling on his backside. "Ow!"

"I've got to get back to LA," Horrible muttered in a low whisper.

"Why? Looks like he'll be there for a while," Crane murmured, ignoring the boy at the front as he picked bits of broken glass off of his sketchbook.

"There are two of them now! They could _breed_." He yanked a tiny notebook out of his pocket. "We've got to get that cure. Tonight."

"We?" Crane shook his head. "There's not enough for both of us. In case you've forgotten, he only makes a small amount at a time."

"Fine," Horrible said decisively, flipping to a tiny sketched layout of the office. "Then we'll just steal the formula itself. His computers are here, here, and here. You...do know how to use a computer, right?"

"Don't be an idiot," Crane snapped.

"Just asking."

"Hey." Horrible instinctively slammed the notebook closed as they looked up into the suspicious eyes of the laundry attendant. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," Crane said.

"We're talking about...dragons," Horrible offered.

"Dragons?" the boy said suspiciously.

"Dragons," Crane affirmed weakly.

The boy gave them another suspicious look and returned to his desk to flick more broken glass off of his possessions. "So anyway," Horrible continued in a whisper, "the computers are _here_..."

* * *

It wasn't easy to be Robin, the Boy Wonder. In fact, the name "Boy Wonder" pretty much wrapped up all the problems into one neat, tidy set of syllables.

"Boy". "Boy" was never a good addition to your superhero name. "Boy", "Lad", or any other diminutive told criminals that you weren't _really_ the guy in charge. Admittedly, anyone calling themselves the Boy Anything probably _wasn't_ in charge, but still - there was a certain lack of respect that went along with the name that led to a lot of snarky remarks while he was trying to put on the handcuffs. Criminals were all too eager to do whatever it took so that they weren't taken down by a kid in tights, and if that meant head-butting the kid in any available spot, then head-butt they would.

"Wonder" was the other tricky part, because he was, in fact, a wonder. At his young age, he was a highly accomplished martial artist, a top-ranking criminologist, and he was pretty easy on the eyes, as well. He was an outstanding young man. Generally, this left him out standing alone somewhere while all of his non-superhero peers got together to do whatever it was that teenagers who _didn't_ live with Batman did in their free time.

Not that he spent much time with his superhero peers, either. Oh, he made time for the various leagues of young heroes that popped up occasionally, but generally they were more focused on catching bad guys than catching ballgames. When your schedule was packed with training, school, more training, beating hell out of supervillains and getting fitted for new tights, there was very little room left for fun - and the fact that most of the other superheroes operated during the daytime meant that their schedules hardly ever allowed time for a quick game of Mario Kart.

He hadn't been very thrilled about this trip. Chasing criminals cross-country was okay when they were actually _chasing_ them. When they were tediously tracking them, it was less okay - and having Batman as a road trip buddy was just about as much fun as traveling with a sullen bear.

But then they'd wound up in this weird little cave-house, and suddenly Robin had found himself with two boys who knew _exactly_ what it was like to be him. Better still, they were a lot of fun. They'd laughed and chattered through dinner. He'd been uncertain about eating there - eating food prepared by a professional assassin was definitely not a smart thing to do - but Gordito had warned him that she only poisoned one thing per meal, and Dark Smoke Puncher had instructed him to eat only what she ate. She wouldn't poison herself since they were out of antidotes at the moment.

Aside from the minor matter of the poisoned salad, dinner had been great. After dinner, all seven of them had trooped down to the basement to examine the city through the eyes of countless robot spies lurking in the woods.

Like any proper basement-based robotics lab, the room labeled "ROBOTS" was packed to the brim with wires, tubes, and lovely little twinkling lights displaying the status of countless half-finished robot animals. In the corner, a robot bear with its fur burned off squeaked as its head spun around in slow circles. A set of scorch marks on the concrete floor marked the death of the robot snakes, which were sprayed in tiny pieces all over the room. The complicated mess of wires and rods that made up the interior of one of the snakes dangled limply over a blade on the ceiling fan.

Dark Smoke Puncher swept exploded snake-bits off of the keyboard and tapped in a command. The three-by-three square of monitors lit up, each displaying a different view of the forest and the city. "So what are we looking for? Zombies? That weird-ass jetpack dude?"

Batman slid a small palmtop computer out of his belt and flipped it open. Gloved fingers rattled over the tiny keys. The screens immediately flashed with a huge black-and-yellow Batman symbol before beginning to flick one by one through the feeds, searching for the Scarecrow.

"Hey!" Dark Smoke Puncher protested. "What'd you do?"

"It's an automatic search program," Batman explained, not taking his eyes from the flickering screens.

"But this place is unhackable! How did you _do_ that?" Dark Smoke Puncher demanded.

"He's _Batman_," Dr. McNinja explained.

Dark Smoke Puncher looked at the man in the bat costume, with the bat-shaped emblem on his chest, holding a bat-shaped computer in his gloves with the little pointy bat-wing-esque projections on them. "Thanks. 'Cuz I didn't _know_ that, bro," he said peevishly.

Batman twitched his fingers. Robin, watching closely, translated the sign into its meaning, which was _Get them out of here so I can work_. "Hey," he said, nudging Gordito. "Is there any kind of villain database around here? I've never heard of Dr. Horrible before."

Gordito shrugged. "There's always Wikipedia."

Dark Smoke Puncher, rather irritated at being overridden, stalked away from his computer. "C'mon. There's a computer upstairs we can use." He cleared his throat pointedly. "In _Doc's_ room."

"Stay out of my room!" Doc ordered halfheartedly, with his brain operating on Sibling Autopilot.

"Don't you want to show them your posters?" Gordito said innocently, his mustache dancing with mischief.

"No!" Doc barked. "Use your own computer, Sean. Or do you have a big guild raid tonight?" he said, just as innocently as Gordito.

Mitzi and Dan immediately turned suspicious eyes on their son. "Not cool, bro," he muttered, edging out of the room. "C'mon, guys. _C'mon_," he hissed when neither of them moved.

"Go on," Doc said, flapping his hands as if shooing chickens. "Azeroth awaits!"

"_Shut up_!" Dark Smoke Puncher yelped, darting out of the room. Robin and Gordito trotted off behind him.

* * *

The next day found them still in the basement of the little cave dwelling. They hadn't slept, and they'd only eaten because Mitzi had threatened to torch the basement if they didn't come upstairs occasionally for slightly less poisonous meals. She definitely could have taught Alfred a thing or two about forcing food down his stubborn boss's throat.

The lot of a sidekick was often disappointing. In this case, Batman had ordered Robin to stay behind and look after Gordito and Dark Smoke Puncher while he and Dr. McNinja retrieved the two traveling villains. It wasn't that the two boys were untrained liabilities - far from it, in fact. Batman had ordered them to stay behind because of a few minor issues he had with the pair of them. To put it bluntly, Dark Smoke Puncher killed people, and Gordito killed people with_ guns_. Batman didn't want them anywhere near him or the villains.

A door slammed closed upstairs as the pair of vigilantes left. "I still don't see why we couldn't go," Gordito sulked. "How hard could it be to catch _those_ two?"

"I told you," Robin repeated, "we have to watch the feeds. Maybe we'll find them before Batman does!"

"Maybe Yoshi will stop stealing Judy's hotdogs," Gordito snorted.

"What?"

"It's not going to happen. They could be _anywhere_." Gordito flopped back in his chair. The feeds slowly flicked through their progression of the city: a sandwich shop, a cemetery with hundreds of recently-filled graves, a Wal-Mart truck, a tiny kitten sleeping in a pet store window..."We're never going to find them this way."

"Well, _someone_ will find them," Robin sighed. "We've just got to keep looking anyway."

"You're okay with staying here?" Dark Smoke Puncher asked Robin. "I mean, dude dragged you all the way here to leave you in the basement. What's up with that?"

"Yeah," Gordito said. "Doesn't he let you have any fun?"

"I fight villains all the time!" Robin said defensively. "Just...not the Scarecrow, normally. Or the Joker. Or Bane. Or...Croc..."

"So no, you _don't_ get the fun ones," Gordito said decisively. "C'mon, don't you want to show him you can handle the Scarecrow?"

"Yeah!" Dark Smoke Puncher said enthusiastically. "We could go out and, like, totally _wreck_ him-"

"No!" Robin snapped. "Disobey _Batman_? Are you _crazy_? Last time I did that, he kept me on the obstacle course for six weeks."

"So?" Dark Smoke Puncher demanded. "What do you think I'm looking at, since Dr. Big Mouth told Mom and Dad about the guild? Three months _minimum_ living in the gym. And _I_ still want to go out there!"

"We've _got_ to stay here," Robin said firmly. "Okay?"

"Fine," Gordito said, blowing a frustrated sigh through his mustache. "I'll watch the left side of the feed, and Sean - er, Dark Smoke Puncher will take the right. We'll take it in shifts."

"Great." Robin stood up. "Do you guys want a drink or anything?"

"Water'd be cool," Dark Smoke Puncher said, taking Robin's seat. Gordito nodded. Robin trotted upstairs, filled a few glasses with water, and hurried back down again.

"Guys, I - " He paused, looking around the empty room. "Guys?"

The screens flashed with a full image of Gordito and Dark Smoke Puncher, out in the cave, climbing onto the hairless robot bear. "_Dammit_!" Water sloshed out of the glasses as he slammed them onto a nearby table and bolted back upstairs.

"Guys! Stop!" he bellowed as he burst through the front door. Dark Smoke Puncher, ignoring him, tapped on a keypad in the bear's left shoulder. The bear lumbered forward, metal feet thudding heavily into the ground as the beast accelerated.

When in doubt, go for the grapnel. Robin shot his little grapnel directly into the wiring on the bear's right hind leg and held on as it broke into a canter. He ran, panting, behind it, letting it drag him faster and faster as the two other young vigilantes attempted to save the city without him.

A sign bearing the words NO TRESPASSING shot up in front of him. With one jump-kick, he knocked it off of its nails and slammed it to the ground beneath his feet. Using the planks like a surfboard, he drew himself closer and closer to the bear, pulling on the grapnel rope hand-over-hand. _Almost there...almost there_...

He stomped heavily on the board and flipped himself up onto the bear, handspringing over the two boys to land angrily on the bear's head. "Stop, already!" he bellowed.

Dark Smoke Puncher tapped on the keyboard again. The bear's head shot out on a long, prehensile neck, sending Robin flailing into the sky. With his legs firmly locked around the thing's snarling jaws, he shot the rewinding grapnel into the thing's chest and pushed the button.

The bear let out a tortured mechanical whine as the force of the grapnel dragged its head back to the rest of it, leaving its long loop of neck to tangle in its feet. The bear tripped on its own neck and tumbled to the ground, sending Dark Smoke Puncher and Gordito tumbling head-over-heels into a nearby pile of dead leaves.

When they extracted themselves, they found Robin glaring down at them. "We just wanted to help," Gordito explained, with a dry leaf dangling from the tip of his mustache.

"Yeah. We took out a ghost wizard," Dark Smoke Puncher pointed out. "We can handle two dudes in costumes."

"And it's not like we're going to kill anyone," Gordito added.

"We're not?" Dark Smoke Puncher asked, bewildered. Gordito elbowed him hard in the ribs. "We're not," he said.

Robin sighed. On one hand, they _would_ be a help. Maybe they could work their way into whatever plan Dr. McNinja and Batman had cooked up between them. On the other hand...Batman was not going to be happy about this.

Well, what choice did he have? "Can you get the bear running again?" he asked. "It's a long way back to the office." Hopefully, that's where everyone was. Hopefully, they weren't going to screw up Batman's plans.

But then, Batman had plans for everything, didn't he? He'd probably planned for this the very instant that he'd met the pair of them. Robin brightened. Yes, things were probably going to turn out okay after all.

And he continued to think that right up to the moment when the world went _foom_.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Skullcrusher Mountain is a song by Jonathan Coulton. Captain Hammer's theme, if you were wondering, is the Atlas Park theme from City of Heroes. Speaking of MMORPG's, you _know_ DSP's into World of Warcraft. _


	4. Once More With Feeling

_Author's Note: You might want to brush up on your memories of South Park the Movie's song 'La Resistance'. Hint, hint. _

* * *

As you might imagine, strategy is vital to the lives of both criminals and crimefighters. Hours and sometimes days of thought are devoted to planning and outthinking one's opponent. If I hire too many henchmen, will one of them talk - or, worse yet, will one of them be Batman in disguise? If I were to beat up everyone in _this_ bar, would someone be willing to tell me where his boss is lairing? And, of course, there is the never-ending dance of weapon acquisition and robbery foiling that always goes wrong for somebody.

But sometimes, strategy is pretty much useless. After so many years of fighting one another - or, at the very least, fighting The Other Guys - you _know_ what the other person is going to do next, just as they know your next move, no matter how fiendishly cunning you may think it to be. Such was the case in Cumberland tonight.

Dr. McNinja and Batman had hidden themselves quietly in the lab. There was only one logical reason that the two crooks would bother to come all the way out to Maryland - the anti-ninja formula, which, as far as they knew, was carefully tucked away in the lab. (Surprisingly, it still _was_ in the lab. Bait was a marvelous way to attract criminals, even dangerous bait like this. Unfortunately, even if the criminals in question _did_ manage to break into the lab, they wouldn't be able to access the formula. The human brain was a wonderful place to keep secrets, and Doc had stashed the formula in his memory and nowhere else.)

Doc, in his hidden perch above the ceiling tiles, peered curiously down into the seemingly empty room. A laptop with a tiny homing device hidden in a USB port glowed invitingly on the bench where he normally kept his emergency anti-lumberjacking kit. Batman, crouched a few feet away from him over another ceiling support, squinted at a small wrist computer. A small army of repurposed Chuck E. Cheese robots lurked in the forest around the tiny office, their camera-lensed eyes focused on the road and every possible entry to the building. The various feeds from their positions sent a blinking blue glow glimmering over Batman's face as he watched for intruders.

Nothing - not even an owl or a moth - moved. The forest was eerily motionless, which tended to be a usual side effect when you marched half a dozen anthropomorphic man-sized robot animals with whirring eyes into the area.

_Brrrrrring_! The phone on the wall clattered cheerily into life. The doctor sighed, peeled back the ceiling tile, and landed on the ground with a gentle _thud._

Batman stuck his head out of the hole. This was no time to take a phone call. "What are you _doing_?" he hissed.

"It could be an emergency!"

"Aren't you supposed to be closed?"

"I'm always open," Doc explained, scooping up the handset. "Hello?" He rolled his eyes. "I don't have time for this right now. Call back tomorrow!" he snapped into the phone.

"But I have _diabeeeeeetus_!" the voice on the other end wailed as he slammed the phone back onto the hanger.

"Sorry," he apologized, swinging himself back up into the ceiling. "Not important. He'll just have to-"

_Brrrrrring_! Doc, dangling from the ceiling like an opossum from its mother, glared down at the all-too-chipper phone. _Brrrrrring_!

"Answer it," Batman said curtly, squinting at the tiny monitor. "They're not here yet."

Doc nodded and obediently swung himself back to the ground. The pale beige plastic of the phone glinted in the moonlight as he pressed it to his mask. "I don't care about your diabetes!" he snapped. "I told you, call back tomorrow!"

He paused. "Yes...who is this?" he demanded. Batman turned up the gain on his tiny long-range microphone and aimed it at the handset.

"_...is Dr. Horrible,_" a voice said smugly. "_We have the boys. You've got two hours to find them, otherwise...things could get messy_." _Click_.

Batman spun the volume dial down on the mic as Dr. McNinja turned to peer up at him. "That was Dr. Horrible. They've got the boys," he called.

"Right on schedule," Batman said smugly.

"You _knew_ they were going to kidnap them?"

Batman shrugged. The sky was blue, water was wet, and villains who had never faced him before kidnapped his sidekick to try and slow him down. (Villains who _had_ faced him before tended to avoid kidnapping Robin, unless they really didn't care about being sent to the hospital wing of Arkham yet again.) Frankly, he was mildly surprised that the Scarecrow had gone along with it.

Speaking of villains..."I want you to drive out there and get them back."

McNinja visibly swelled with pride. Then, as a thought struck him, he wilted like a flower dropped into the desert. "I let Judy have the car tonight for pottery class!"

A set of keys flashed down through the darkness and landed in his lab coat pocket. "Take my car," Batman ordered. He tapped in a command on his wrist computer. "Follow the dot on the screen - it's Robin's tracking device," he added. McNinja stood there, wide-eyed, with one hand tracing the outline of the keys in his pocket. "What?"

"Nothing! I just...nothing. I'll be back with them right away!" McNinja bolted from the room.

Batman waited until he heard the roar of the engine fading away. Then, like a living puddle of ink, he oozed out of the ceiling and slid the removable tile back into place.

Batman was not a trusting person. In fact, he was deficient in a lot of heroic attributes - hope, cheerfulness, the ability to turn a thug over to the cops without a dislocated joint or two - but chief among his missing personality traits was that of trust.

He didn't trust anyone. From a very early age, he'd learned that the only person you can rely upon is yourself. Everyone else left, or was taken from him by an uncaring universe (aided by various well-armed madmen). Oh, certainly he relied upon his associates, like Robin, and quite often he placed his life in their hands - but he never fully trusted them. The back of his mind constantly seethed with plans and tactics to turn any situation to his advantage, even if Robin were to suddenly jump him from behind and try to strangle him. It had happened before, thanks to a certain someone's mind-control devices, and who knew when it might happen again?

But of all the people he didn't trust, assassins had to take the top place on the list. Okay, so Dr. McNinja was a doctor who spent his days helping people. It couldn't be forgotten that he was a _ninja_, though, a murderer hundreds of times over. He couldn't trust the man to get the boys back without a bloodbath.

On the other hand, the man might do what he was told. He certainly knew that Batman frowned upon killing people, and he seemed a little too eager to obey Batman's every word. He hadn't missed seeing various scraps of Bat-line and assorted other paraphernalia disappearing into the man's lab coat pockets, after all.

So, instead of trusting Dr. McNinja to do his job, Batman slipped through the raptor-shaped hole in the wall and trotted out into the woods. Doc would be forced to stick to the roads, whereas Batman could cut quickly through the forest and beat him there by a handful of minutes. If you wanted a job done properly, you had to do it yourself - or, at the very least, lurk in the forest to make sure your associates were behaving themselves.

* * *

Crane rubbed tired eyes with one hand as he leaned against a handy tree. "Let me get this straight. You saw these three boys on their way to stop us while you were looking for a good place to hide the truck..."

"Yes," Horrible confirmed.

"And they were, in fact, going the opposite direction from where we were..."

"Yeah."

"And their transportation had broken down, and it was unlikely at best that they would have gotten anywhere useful tonight..."

"Well, _maybe_," Horrible protested.

"And even though they were virtually no threat, you _still_ kidnapped them and brought them back here to your lair," Crane finished, totally disgusted. He glared at the three boys across the little clearing, seated in a line on the remains of the robot bear. Its long, prehensile neck was wrapped tightly around each of them, pinning their arms firmly to their sides. On the bear's head, a small cylindrical metal device blinked quietly as it continually overrode the bear's programming and kept the hero kids firmly imprisoned. Belts - utility and otherwise - and weapons dangled from the nearby trees as if someone had been really hard up for Christmas decorations that year.

"Well, technically I brought the lair to them, but _yes_!" Horrible snapped, shoving his goggles back on top of his head. "What better way to get the heroes away from the lair than to take their sidekicks hostage? It's traditional! It's bound to work!"

"It's going to land us in the hospital!" Crane growled. "You've never seen Batman when one of his brats has been taken. He tends to overreact." Batman's last little _overreaction_ had left him in traction for weeks. It wouldn't happen again. He _thunk_ed the back of his head lightly against the tree, eyes squinched shut with thought. "All right. Here's what we'll do. That device of yours controls the bear, correct? We'll tell it to go west and keep going. When we show up at the lab, we'll tell the heroes and they'll have to go save their kids...what?" he asked when Horrible shook his head. "What? _What did you do_?"

"I already called him!" Horrible bleated. "They're on their way to get them back right now!"

Crane scuttled away from the tree, planting his back against the side of the WalMart trailer. This was bad. This was very, very...

Or was it? This was the perfect opportunity to leave Dr. Nobody behind while he got the formula for himself! "Fine," he muttered. "Since you took the kids, _you_ watch them. I'll go to the lab by myself."

"But you can't!" Horrible protested. "The plan was that -"

"_You_ changed the plan," Crane snarled, "so _you_ watch the kids. I've got to get to the lab before he gets here!"

"You're going to leave me alone to fight _both_ of them?"

Crane rolled his eyes under the mask. "If I know Batman, he'll still have someone there to catch us," he said. "You'd better hope it's the ninja that comes for those boys."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Horrible said irritably. He drew himself upward, presumably remembering that he was a supervillain who wasn't concerned about two piddly little heroes. "Do you know how much tech I've got in that truck? The _army_ could come for those boys and never get close. You'll see. Things will go like clockwork."

Unfortunately, things often went like clockwork for Jonathan Crane - overwound, badly assembled clockwork that tended to spit springs into inaccessible corners. "Fine." With that, he clamped a hand over the rattling fear toxin canisters at his waist and strode off into the underbrush.

"_History will be made this day_..."

Crane froze. He couldn't have just heard that. It wasn't possible. The Scarecrow crashed back through the shrubbery to see Dr. Horrible standing nobly on a rock, arms outspread, throat bobbing as he drew in more air.

"What in the name of God are you _doing_?" Crane hissed.

"...Singing," Horrible admitted.

"Why?" Crane demanded.

"It just...felt right. Don't you ever sing?" Horrible asked, confused.

Did the man _want_ to be a target? Just what kind of lunatic had he teamed up with? Sure, most of his other criminal connections were a few walnuts short of a fruitcake, but they'd never broken out into _song_. Crane exhaled a short bark of a sigh and crunched back into the forest.

Dr. Horrible waited until the sounds of burlap-covered feet had faded into the distance. "_The fate of a planet in my hands..._" he sang quietly to himself, building in volume as the Scarecrow disappeared. "_And soon they'll see, the children three, their work is all futility, and evil will rule these lands..._"

He hopped down from his rock and paced toward the three boys. The boys exchanged a pained look with one another as they were approached by a villain who was not only intent on gloating, but gloating in song.

"_You see the heroes there, they're standing in our way. But once we have the cure, villains will rule the day! And when you all are dead, or simply powerless - We survive, and we will have success! We may throw you off a cliff, or deep into a vat. You may become scared stiff, I know that _he'd_ like that! Or we may let you go - because of our oblige noblesse -_ _We survive, and we will have success!_"

Meanwhile, across town, Dr. McNinja was roaring down the streets of Cumberland. A happy shout of utter joy turned into music as it left his mouth. "_The Batmobile! The Batmobile! Because our sidekicks might get scarred I get to drive the Batman's car!_"

Doc squinted down at himself, uncertain why he'd felt the need to sing. But then, with the recollection that he was in Batman's car, sitting where the man himself sat on a daily basis, any worries he had were promptly tossed out the window and abandoned in favor of sheer worshipful ecstasy.

The trio of boys leaned close to one another, intending to exchange a few words of comfort. Instead, they found themselves singing in unison.

"_The robot bear, it has been hacked. The robot bear, with a stupid hat. Sidekicks imprisoned - hardly rare! This robot bear!_"

Twigs smacked into his burlap mask as the Scarecrow fought his way through the woods, dreaming of tomorrow. A tune he'd heard once years ago bubbled in the back of his brain, and he muttered his thoughts along with it as he stumbled along."_Batman, sealed in a tomb, inhaling sweet fear toxin fumes. For with the cure Batman is doomed and so I must procure it soon!_"

Gordito and Dark Smoke Puncher stared at one another, confusion wrinkling their eyes. "_Stuck inside a musical thriller! Well, you know I think that this line's mostly filler!_"

Gordito asked, "_Where is this music coming from?_"

"_And why are all the words so dumb?_" Dark Smoke Puncher chimed in.

Robin leaned over and interrupted. "_Batman will come to free us all, then he'll take care of Horrible. Say, can you hack the bear to set us free?_"

Dr. McNinja, tearing down the wooded road, pressed a button on the Batmobile's glittering dashboard. The canopied top slid back, letting the brisk air whip around him as he burned onward. He slowed to take a curve.

A brown-clad figure scuttled down the road in the distance. Thanks to the Batmobile's long-range listening devices, he could just barely make out the words the man was singing. "_A life without Batman_..."

It had to be the Scarecrow! He accelerated in the man's direction. If he could take down the Scarecrow _and_ save the kids, he was almost _certain_ to make Batman happy. Well, as happy as Batman ever got, anyway. So, step one - stomp the Scarecrow.

Doc gunned the engine and raced in the general direction of the fleeing rogue. Chasing an actual Gotham villain in the actual Batmobile...what could be better? "_I have to get the sidekicks free but until then, I'm Batman! WHEEEEE!_"

Dr. Horrible paced up to the boys, deftly flicking Dark Smoke Puncher's hand away from the exposed bear wiring as he sang. "_Boys there is no need to run, it isn't worth your time. For with my freeze ray gun, I'll turn you into mimes. You're trapped - there's no escape! Pardon me, I digress, We survive and we will have succeeeeeeeeeeess!_"

* * *

Dr. Horrible belted out the last note, arms stretched dramatically to the sides, one foot planted on a rock that Robin was certain hadn't been there a minute ago. He darted a glance past the singing doctor into the shadowy woods.

There! What was that light? A tiny, almost invisible flash of bluish light had lit up the darkness for a mere moment. Someone was out there - and since Crane didn't go in for flashy lights, and Moist was still reading his comic in the driver's seat of the truck, that meant that help was on the way. Robin refocused his gaze on the oblivious doctor as he flourished his fists into the air.

"..._eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss_!" Directly on the beat, where an orchestra might have blared a final spray of notes, a fist like a lump of stone slammed into the back of Dr. Horrible's head with a painful-sounding _thud_. The impact sent the doctor tumbling forward in a somersault to sprawl limply at the three boys' feet.

"Hey!" The truck door creaked open, sending a small gush of water pouring off of the floorboards and down the side of the truck. Moist tossed his comic to the seat beside him with a wet _sthlap_ and began to slither to the ground. "What do you think you're-"

In one motion, almost faster than the eye could follow, Batman slipped a batarang out of his belt and flung it backward without looking. It spiraled through the air and smacked Moist directly between the eyes.

"Nice," Robin said cheerfully as the henchman landed in a squishy puddle on the ground.

"What happened to Doc?" Gordito asked, craning his head to peer around the vigilante.

"He's chasing the Scarecrow," Batman said flatly. He stalked over to the bear's head, a good five feet away from the boys, and inspected the small cylindrical 'hat' blinking cheerfully in the night.

Metal crunched and squealed as he stomped on it. The shattered remains of the control cylinder sprinkled on the ground as the bear whined mechanically and went limp.

The boys wriggled out of the loosening loops of bear neck and hopped to the ground. "What's the plan?" Robin asked, brushing a bit of singed bear fur off of his tights.

"Back to the lab," Batman ordered. He retrieved his fallen batarang and slid it into his belt as Dark Smoke Puncher and Robin scooped up their unconscious ex-captors. "This way."

* * *

Plans are vital to the success of any endeavor, be it heroic or otherwise. Very few people can wander blindly into a situation and come out on top. However, plans are only as good as the people who follow them - and when someone has chosen to ignore the plan, it's likely that that someone will find himself in a very uncomfortable situation indeed.

The plan had been to save the children. Doc had been on his way, sure enough - but then the Scarecrow had crossed his path and given him ideas. Ninjas, after all, enjoy the little things in life, like a one-on-one pursuit at midnight through ghost-filled forests.

Of course, most ninjas don't typically pursue their prey in giant black Batmobiles with flames shooting out of the back. "STOP!" Dr. McNinja thundered at the fleeing man. The Scarecrow, one hand clapped onto his hat to keep it from falling off, pelted onward, wishing for breath to curse at the impenetrable foliage lining the path on both sides.

It might have been easier to leap out of the vehicle and take down the Scarecrow by hand, but there was one flaw in that plan. It required getting out of the Batmobile, something that Doc wasn't planning to do. Ever.

Buttons, buttons, buttons. Doc squinted at the array of little lit-up circles indicating various Bat-gadgetry. Was _this_ the net? He pressed it.

Crane squealed and bounced into the air, deftly avoiding the giant grapnel hook as it shot between his ankles. Doc slammed the button again and the hook retracted.

This?

A cloud of smoke puffed out of the rear of the car, reflecting the dull orange glow of the flame billowing above the tires.

This _had_ to be it.

A jet of water cannoned out of the front bumper, hitting the Scarecrow directly between the shoulder blades. He screeched and tumbled forward, turning a neat somersault and rising immediately to his feet to continue running.

Doc was impressed. He hadn't seen anyone this good at running away in _years_.

Two huge trees nestled together at the side of the road with barely two feet between the trunks. Jonathan Crane dove for the gap as if heavenly salvation lay on the other side and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

Doc slumped back in his seat and turned the water off. If only this car had a manual...or a _computer_! He brightened. "Computer?" he said briskly.

There was no answer.

"Um...Car?"

Nothing happened.

"Batmobile?" he tried. The screen fizzed into life. "Great! Tell me how to..." He squinted disbelievingly at the screen. "_Ben_? I thought you were dead!...again."

The ghostly visage of Benjamin Franklin's clone peered through tiny round spectacles on the little round screen. "I snuck away from my table," he said. Then, remembering his reason for haunting the Batmobile, he straightened his glasses and leaned forward. "You let him get away?" Ben snapped disapprovingly.

"No," Doc defended. "I'm going to drive to the lab."

"He's _almost there_!" Ben pointed out.

"Right," Doc shrugged. "And what could possibly happen?"

Ben rolled his eyes. "Oh, _I_ don't know," he sighed. "He's only armed with about twelve canisters of fear toxin and Yoshi's _still in the lab_..."

Doc said something unprintable and yanked the car onto the nearest deer trail. He wasn't certain if the Batmobile was built for off-roading, but now he really couldn't afford to take the time to meander around taking the paved roads. The villains holding the sidekicks were one thing - sidekicks were basically professional hostages, and he knew the three boys could take care of themselves - but _Yoshi_? Who knew what kind of effect fear toxin would have on a raptor? More importantly, who knew what would happen when a fear-crazed raptor scented a hidden vigilante above the ceiling tiles?

Dr. McNinja knew. That's why he wasn't bothering to swerve away from little things like rocks, road signs, and the occasional tree.

* * *

Jonathan Crane was a man used to running for his life. Not in the traditional sense, of course, since his adversaries were well-known for their penchant of leaving villains alive. However, if anyone on this earth can be said to have no life, it is the man splayed without dignity in Arkham's hospital wing, strapped down while he impatiently waits for his bones to knit. Again.

He wasn't used to racing on foot down muddy forested roads, pursued by a heavily-armed ninja in a car that could feasibly kill him in twenty different ways, but that was probably just one of the perks of travel.

The slightly parted trees had been like the gate to Heaven. He'd darted through, wheezing, and had taken a precious moment to gasp for air as the Batmobile's engine roared sullenly away. Then, with aching lungs, he tottered in the general direction of the lab.

The front of the building was brilliantly lit to draw in late-night customers. Crane skirted the building and crept through the gaping hole in the lab's window. His gaze darted from shadow to shadow, looking for bat-shaped doom.

But Batman wasn't there. Against all expectations, his back tensed even tighter. If Batman wasn't _visibly_ there, one could be certain that he was lurking out of sight, ready to pounce.

A laptop glowed invitingly on the lab table. The formula had to be lurking somewhere on its hard drive. And if not - if this was just a trap - well, there had to be _something_ useful on it. Other formulas, addresses of pharmaceutical distributors, embarrassing pictures of McNinja...Crane eased the laptop closed, wincing as the lid _click_ed shut, and tucked the computer under one arm.

_Hsssshh._ He stiffened. Someone was breathing. It was almost inaudible, but there on the very edge of sound was a faint, raspy, bubbly breath.

It couldn't be Batman. He'd seen Batman breathe silently through a broken, bleeding face, a feat which should have been physically impossible. There was no way that Batman would betray his presence with something so meaningless as breathing.

He padded silently across the tiles. There, in the corner, was a large, fluffy round bed. It had tiny, happy butterflies printed wildly on its bright orange fabric. And curled on the bed, like nature's most unloved kitten, was one heavily bandaged velociraptor.

Crane's hand slid to his waist, automatically checking the connections between his toxin tanks and his wrist sprayers. Oh, _yes_. Perfect.

The absolute silence of thievery and mischief was broken by the faint grumble of the Batmobile as it came to a halt in front of the building. Footsteps, almost silent as they connected with the grass, rustled as the doctor made his way toward the window. Crane crouched, pointing an arm in the dinosaur's direction.

Dr. McNinja vaulted through the shattered window. His shoes crunched on broken glass as he glared at the Scarecrow.

"Stay back," Crane warned, gesturing at the raptor meaningfully.

"If you make me kill my raptor, I will be _so mad_ at you," Dr. McNinja scowled, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Crane paused, considering the situation. His eyes, barely visible in the ragged holes of his mask, flicked to the two swords strapped across the doctor's shoulders, the myriad of smaller throwing implements laced into belts that crisscrossed his front, and the batarangs peeking out of his lab coat pockets.

Well, if he was going to be a target _anyway_...he may as well make it worthwhile. Fear toxin hissed from his wrist in a cloud of sickly green mist as he lashed out with one long leg, kicking the raptor awake. The raptor, as most creatures do upon a rude awakening, sucked in a breath of surprise. (A breath, it must be said, containing surprise and about six doses of fear toxin.)

A throwing star hissed through the air and buried itself in the toxin delivery mechanism on Crane's belt. The sharp metal star dug through the various valves and tubes and jerked to a halt a mere millimeter before it gutted him. He could feel it pricking his skin through the rough burlap of his costume.

The lab door slammed shut as Crane pelted into the hallway. He thudded down the corridor, clutching the laptop close to his chest as he aimed himself for the front door.

* * *

A lot of fuss has been made about velociraptor intelligence, mostly thanks to their starring role in a certain fictional theme park. They were smart enough to hunt together, to stand as bait and lure their human prey, and (most importantly) to turn doorknobs.

Admittedly, the door to Dr. McNinja's lab was a normal round knob, and not the easy-to-claw levered version from the films. Still, the only door Yoshi had ever cared about had been firmly attached to the refrigerator, so knobs of any sort were a foreign notion to him. So when Dr. Crane slipped out and slammed the door, he effectively ceased to exist in Yoshi's immediate universe. The only other being left was Dr. McNinja...sort of.

Fear toxin came in many varieties. There were toxins to unearth secret phobias, and toxins to cause general fear, and toxins designed to induce fear of specific objects. This toxin, however, was designed to put the victim into a hallucinatory state, where the world and everything in it was totally ruled by the commandment that everything should inspire terror.

Yoshi wasn't used to fearing anything. A seven-foot velociraptor with claws like butcher knives had very little to worry about, other than the occasional battle with the receptionist. So when the lab suddenly melted away, becoming a slippery-floored gymnasium packed to the brim with velociraptors that were twice his size, Yoshi's first instinct was to kill them all.

Dr. McNinja hadn't breathed in more than a whiff of the toxin. He didn't _need_ to. At the moment, he was dealing with a hallucinating, wildly violent velociraptor, and that was enough to terrify anyone. "YOSHI!" he bellowed, ducking as the raptor scythed past him.

He bounced off of the wall, snarling death threats in Velociraptor, and focused again on Doc. Yoshi raced toward him, claws _skreek_ing on the tiles, and opened his jaws wide, wider, letting out a scream of victory.

A scream of victory, alas, that was promptly silenced when Doc smashed his face in with a table. It wasn't elegant, or subtle, and the move would probably make his mother order him back to several months of work in the gym if he'd dared to try it around her, but it had worked. Yoshi fell to the ground, twitching, as his concussed brain bounced in his skull like an out of control racquetball.

The force of the impact had slammed Dr. McNinja into the other lab table. He shook his head briskly, dislodging a clipboard that had taken up residence on his head, and looked at his opponent. Yoshi _raaatch_ed a whimper and stretched on the tiles, motionless.

Then...

Doc rose to his feet, gracefully, as if gravity was a concern only for other people. He whipped the door open, ignoring the lock as it tore out of the doorframe in an explosion of splinters, and trotted down the hallway. "_Scarecrow_."

* * *

The semi truck blared through the night, skidding around curves in the road like a tricycle driven by the tweakiest of tweakers.

They'd had to get to the lab - fast. Dark Smoke Puncher and Robin had disconnected the trailer in minutes, with the help of Bat-gadgetry and ninja tricks, and they'd been rewarded by the unmistakable noise of thousands of dollars in intricate electronics smashing irreparably as the trailer dropped heavily into the grass.

Batman had taken the regrettably damp job of driving the truck. Robin, Gordito, and Dark Smoke Puncher crouched on the back, holding their unconscious bound-together charges in place as the truck swerved around corners. They effortlessly kept their balance as the truck beneath them twisted and jerked along the deserted roads.

The truck spun to a halt at the bottom of the path leading to the office. Batman, with moisture cascading from his cape, leaped from the cab and led the procession of junior heroes toward the lab. Robin trotted ahead, squinting at the ground in order to make out muddy footprints that could have only come from the Scarecrow's feet.

They led to the lab. The foursome made it there just in time to see Dr. McNinja's inspired table-to-teeth maneuver. As they drew closer, McNinja ripped the door from his own lab and stalked into the hallway. The raptor, bleeding from the face, twitched feebly on the floor.

"Yoshi!" Gordito gasped, vaulting over the windowsill toward his much-abused raptor.

The chemical scent of fear toxin, harsh and oddly acrid, lingered in the air. In one synchronized motion, Batman and Robin extracted the antitoxin from their belts and tossed the canisters toward the two other boys. "Take care of the raptor," Batman instructed, gesturing at Robin to follow him.

They strode down the hallway, capes flaring, until they heard the sound of mayhem coming from behind a door. Robin flung it open just in time to be bodyslammed by the Scarecrow, desperate to evade capture from the infuriated ninja behind him.

The Scarecrow, like so many people in unfamiliar exam room hallways, had gotten thoroughly turned around. Every door looked the same - and none of them were the exit. He'd been in half a dozen exam rooms before the ninja doctor had come snarling down the hallway at him. With no way to use his delightful toxins, he was down to one option. Escape. Unfortunately, the ninja wasn't keen on the idea of letting him go.

The Scarecrow hurriedly kneed Robin in the stomach and tumbled into another exam room, slamming the door as Doc barreled into it. "You're not going to get away. You know that, right?"

The only answer was the sound of breaking glass as the Scarecrow frantically tried to escape through the window - the window that, he was probably finding out, dropped a grate of iron over the glass when the security system detected that someone was trying to break in.

Doc shifted his grip on the swords and launched himself at the door again, with a look in his eyes that said that the Scarecrow had just earned himself a table next to Frans Rayner.

_Thwip-thwip-thwip-clang_! A set of bolas whizzed out of the darkness and wrapped around his ankles like a loving cat while a little Robin-sized batarang knocked into his hand, bouncing off of his tendons just hard enough to make him lose his grip on the sword. It spiraled wildly through the air and shuddered to a halt in the doorframe.

Instead of falling to the floor, Doc flipped and neatly landed on his bound-together feet as only someone who had attended gymnastics lessons since the age of two could. The sword in his right hand flashed as it sliced effortlessly through his bonds.

A bead of sweat escaped from under his mask and trickled down his face. Batman was working against him? No, that was ridiculous. Just because Batman was getting ready to throw more stuff at him and the walls were melting, that didn't mean...oh. Walls were melting. Walls didn't melt, normally. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the Batman wasn't really the Batman, but...the Scarecrow! That was it, he was hallucinating and the Scarecrow was trying to stop him!

He spun elegantly through the barrage of faux Bat-gadgetry and sailed at the vigilantes. Robin attempted a football-style leg tackle while Batman trapped the ninja's sword between two serrated wrist bands. Doc snarled and wrenched himself free, sending the three of them into a tumbling, wild pile of violence.

The Scarecrow quietly cracked his door open. The three heroes were totally consumed with attacking one another. As silently as possible, he crept from the room and sprinted down the hallway, out the only door he hadn't yet tried.

It had taken only a few seconds for Doc to incapacitate Batman. Having a large sword had its benefits, one of which was that it could end arguments rather quickly in close quarters. Doc huddled on top of Batman, with the sword's edge pressed lightly across the man's exposed chin, digging in just above the armored neck. He paused, gasping for breath, trying to reconcile the ninja half of him that screamed for death and the Batman-loving side of him that could never hope to hurt anyone who looked like the man himself.

Which is just what Batman expected, of course, which is why he allowed himself to be 'captured'. Laying there on the floor, with a sword to his throat, made certain that Doc's attention would be on him and not on Robin, who was sneaking up behind him with the antitoxin. The automatic syringe hissed as it contacted the ninja's neck.

Doc felt his eyes cross as the chemicals ripped through his bloodstream, canceling out the dripping walls and the other minor hallucinations. And then...he looked down at the man under his sword, who still looked like Batman. Funny. Why wasn't _that_ hallucination disappearing?

Batman swatted him aside with an open palm to the side of the head and got up, ignoring the slight scratch that began to sting as it contacted his rather unsanitary Bat-suit. Doc shook his head sharply, coloring as he realized what he'd done. "Batman, I'm -"

"No time. He's getting away." Batman and Robin raced down the hallway, in pursuit of the Scarecrow. Doc pounded after them, sword held high as if he was the spirit of all avengers hoping to rid the world of evil once and for all. Batman threw the door open and charged toward the front office. The heroes skidded to a halt as a totally unexpected sight met their eyes.

The office looked absolutely normal. The slightly dimmed nighttime lighting cast soothing warm light on the soft chairs in the waiting room. Freshly watered plants dangled moistly from the walls, green leaves barely concealing a few tiny budding flowers. At the desk, Judy grunted a gorilla melody as she neatly tapped papers into piles suitable for filing.

And in the corner, the Scarecrow slumped like a forgotten rag doll. His legs, which had been twisted up beneath him, shoved the small of his back outward while his arms lay motionless across his chest, palms up. Shattered freshly-baked ceramic in shards and smears of dust covered the man like a deadly snowfall.

Metal scraped on metal as the heroes sheathed their weapons. The phone buzzed gently into life. Judy daintily flicked a speck of ceramic from her fur and settled the headset on her large black ears. "_Hrmmm_?" she grunted.

* * *

The cops arrived, as they so often did, after all of the excitement was long over. The Scarecrow, still unconscious, had been bundled into the Batmobile like so much dirty laundry. Dr. Horrible had been dumped just as lovingly into the backseat of one of the cop cars. The drivers of the remaining two cars were arguing in very loud voices as to who had to transport Moist, who was sleepily dribbling water from every pore as he stared dazedly at his captors.

Doc had been hoping for a final goodbye from Batman. A handshake, a 'thank you', a stirring speech about his combat skills (even though they'd regrettably been directed at the heroes instead of the villains)...hell, he would have accepted a compliment for his mother's beets!

Instead, as he pointed the nearest cop at Gordito in order to locate Horrible's trailer, the Batmobile roared into life and peeled out down the road. Doc sighed, forlorn, as his hero sped back toward Gotham. Well, at least he had his souvenirs...

He stuck his hands into his pockets.

Gone. The batarangs, the bat-line, every scrap of Bat-stuff that he'd managed to swipe over the past few days had been neatly swiped back from his pockets. He sighed again, broken-hearted, and sulked back to the lab, ignoring the blue-and-red lights of the cop cars as they hauled their human cargo away.

He nudged the door open with a foot and slouched in, fingers exploring the seams of his pockets as if he might have missed something. Paper crinkled under his questing fingertips. He eased the note from its home in the frayed lining of his pocket and unfolded it.

The paper, forgotten, twirled lazily to the floor as the doctor made a mad dash for his lab. The door crashed aside in yet another shower of splinters as he kicked the remains of it out of his way. Then, with a soft intake of breath, he padded reverently up to the table.

The left edge of it had been somewhat marred by Yoshi's face. On the right side of it, carefully laid to avoid blood spatters and toxin residue, lay a full, shiny new set of Bat-gear. Unlike the bits and pieces he'd salvaged and, let's face it, blatantly stole from the Batmobile, this stuff had never thwacked a villain in the head or suspended vigilantes six stories up from the street. It gleamed in the lights, sharp black arcs and curves clearly outlining the Bat-symbol on every neatly stacked batarang and bola.

Another square of paper, bright with the yellow-and-black Bat-symbol, was propped on a grapnel gun. Dr. McNinja reached a disbelieving hand to it and flipped it over. Scratched across the back in thick black marker were three words that made his heart leap.

"_For next time_."

Doc grinned so brightly that light was almost visible from underneath his mask.

"YES!"

(_to be concluded_)


	5. Dr McNinja's Final Thoughts

There's a really good lesson in today's adventure, and that is that it's important to work together. The villains split up and got taken out right away, and the heroes...well, okay, we split up, but we worked together in the_ end_, and that counts too. It's like Ben says, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." Because friendship is like a...a...

You know what? Screw the morality lesson. I got to drive the _Batmobile_, and that's really all you need to know.

* * *

_Author's Note: I'd like to thank Chris Hastings and his team of awesome people, Joss Whedon and his team of awesome people, and everyone who's ever written a Batman story that _hasn't_ made me want to punch them in the face. _

_I'm horrendously sorry about all the delays. It's amazingly difficult to concentrate on silly Bat-stories when you discover that you're growing a person in your abdomen. (Seven more months and I'll be holding my very own baby! I'm not intimidated at all. Really.) We're also moving across the country, so I have to find a cat-friendly apartment from five hundred miles away, and on top of everything else I've got Sleepy-Pregnant-Person Syndrome and I now require at least twelve hours a day of sleep. Have I given you enough excuses yet? _

_I swear that I'm still working on stories. 'Reinventing' is still going to happen, and after that is 'Beach House'. Those _will_ get written. Look for them...um...soonish. _

_Thanks for reading!_


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